Posted
by
timothy
on Sunday December 13, 2015 @06:39AM
from the lots-of-room-in-the-desert dept.

Fast Company takes a brief look at the Aerodrome, a facility open (though not yet complete) in Boulder City, Nevada, which bills itself as the world's first droneport. From the article:
There are other planned droneport projects around the world, most notably one in Rwanda meant to be the launching pad for drones to make deliveries of medical supplies. But that project hasn't yet broken ground, according to Aerodrome officials, while parts of the Boulder City project are already operational and the full facility is under construction and expected to be completed by 2018. The facility is one of six Federal Aviation Administration-approved drone test sites in the United States, Aerodrome officials say. ... The droneport is a private project, but open to the public, and offers flight training, drone repair, pilot certification and testing, and other UAS research, development, and educational services. The facility is meant to be used by any aircraft that weighs less than 1,320 pounds.

Much of the point of using quadcopters commercially is that you don't need any special place to launch them. Much of what people did with them before can be done with a fixed wing. Nobody needs a special place from which to launch drones, and forcing people to use one would defeat most of the purpose.

Much of the point of using quadcopters commercially is that you don't need any special place to launch them. Much of what people did with them before can be done with a fixed wing. Nobody needs a special place from which to launch drones, and forcing people to use one would defeat most of the purpose.

Why do you assume that "drones" are by definition now quadcopters (or multirotors of any kind)? Some of the very few commercial operations that the FAA actually allows for BLOS drone operations involve fixed-wing long range machines that approach military-grade size and complexity. We haven't moved to multirotors from fixed wing - in many cases it's exactly the opposite.

Regardless, the government is only allowing NAS integration testing and research in a handful of very specific locations, and this is o

Why do you assume that "drones" are by definition now quadcopters (or multirotors of any kind)?

That's the usual assumption. And that's what most of them are, anyway, now.

Some of the very few commercial operations that the FAA actually allows for BLOS drone operations involve fixed-wing long range machines that approach military-grade size and complexity.

You mean e.g. for mapping, search & rescue, that sort of thing? Sure. But the overwhelming interest is in VTOL.

Regardless, the government is only allowing NAS integration testing and research in a handful of very specific locations, and this is one of them.

Yes, always doing their best to hamper progress.

They're here to help you.

Then what they should really be doing, besides maybe some kind of registration scheme, is mandating safer batteries. I realize that in-use LiPo fires are relatively rare, but they're going to start becoming more of a thing as people lose drones. A lot of people have reporte

It's a drone park, not a "droneport." A port is a place where you get transportation to other ports.

The Nevada proposal is analogous to a shooting range, a place where you train with your drone so that when you take it out into the world, you will be in control of it and hopefully won't behave like an idiot.